As dense and tangled vegetation One of the most common meanings of
jungle is land overgrown with tangled vegetation at ground level, especially in the
tropics. Typically such vegetation is sufficiently dense to hinder movement by humans, requiring that travellers cut their way through. This definition draws a distinction between a
rainforest and a
jungle, since the understorey of rainforests is typically open of vegetation due to a lack of sunlight, and hence relatively easy to traverse. Jungles may exist within, or at the borders of, tropical forests in areas where the woodland has been opened through natural disturbance such as hurricanes, or through human activity such as logging. The
successional vegetation that springs up following such disturbance, is dense and tangled and is a "typical" jungle. Jungle also typically forms along rainforest margins such as stream banks, once again due to the greater available light at ground level. while the
prop roots and low canopies of mangroves produce similar difficulties.
As moist forest Because European explorers initially travelled through tropical forests largely by river, the dense tangled vegetation lining the stream banks gave a misleading impression that such jungle conditions existed throughout the entire forest. As a result, it was wrongly assumed that the entire forest was impenetrable jungle. This in turn appears to have given rise to the second popular usage of jungle as virtually any humid
tropical forest. Jungle in this context is particularly associated with
tropical rain forest, but may extend to
cloud forest, temperate rainforest, and mangroves with no reference to the vegetation structure or the ease of travel. The terms "tropical forest" and "rainforest" have largely replaced "jungle" as the descriptor of humid tropical forests, a linguistic transition that has occurred since the 1970s. "Rainforest" itself did not appear in English dictionaries prior to the 1970s. The word "jungle" accounted for over 80% of the terms used to refer to tropical forests in print media prior to the 1970s; since then it has been steadily replaced by "rainforest", although "jungle" still remains in common use when referring to tropical rainforests. The term "
The Law of the Jungle" is also used in a similar context, drawn from
Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894)—though in the society of jungle animals portrayed in that book and obviously meant as a metaphor for human society, that phrase referred to an intricate code of laws which Kipling describes in detail, and not at all to a lawless chaos. The word "jungle" carries connotations of untamed and uncontrollable nature and isolation from civilisation, along with the emotions that evokes: threat, confusion, powerlessness, disorientation and immobilisation. The change from "jungle" to "rainforest" as the preferred term for describing tropical forests has been a response to an increasing perception of these forests as fragile and spiritual places, a viewpoint not in keeping with the darker connotations of "jungle".
Cultural scholars, especially
post-colonial critics, often analyse the jungle within the concept of hierarchical domination and the demand western cultures often places on other cultures to conform to their standards of civilisation. For example:
Edward Said notes that the
Tarzan depicted by
Johnny Weissmuller was a resident of the jungle representing the savage, untamed and wild, yet still a white master of it; and in his essay "
An Image of Africa" about
Heart of Darkness Nigerian novelist and theorist
Chinua Achebe notes how the jungle and
Africa become the source of temptation for white European characters like Marlowe and Kurtz. Former
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak compared Israel to "a villa in the jungle", a comparison which had been often quoted in Israeli political debates. Barak's critics on the left side of Israeli politics strongly criticised the comparison. ==See also==